I've been playing the demo on the PC (steam ID: Breadnought). I've found that the game is most fun on harder difficulties, because it's constantly throwing zombies and infected at you, making for a more challenging and scary game. Have yet to play with a good group of people online, but I got my mic working, so I'm psyched.

4 difficulty levels, 5 playable "classes." 1 of those would be the survivors, and although there are four to choose from, the only difference is their personality and dialogue. The other four can only be used online and play much differently.

There's the Smoker, a tall and lanky zombie with a 100 foot tongue that he uses to catch survivors to either stun them or draw them in for a kill.

There's the Hunter, who's the fastest of all the playable characters and can jump very long distances. He pins survivors down and claws at them until they die.

The Boomer, who's the slowest and most frail character, is a massive blob of flesh that pukes on survivors to coat them in bile that attracts large hordes of zombies.

And lastly, the Tank, who's a massive pillar of muscle that uses brute force to either chuck massive blocks of concrete at survivors, or simply beats them to death with his fists. When a Tank appears, all four survivors need to work together to bring him down (especially on Advanced and Expert difficulties).

There are three game modes: campaign, versus, and single player.

The "normal" campaign can only be played online, and features four standalone campaigns that are arranged like horror films through which survivors must fight wave after wave of zombies until their eventual extraction. Each campaign is about 45 minutes long on average, but can be as short as a half an hour if you play through without dying. On the flip side, the time is it takes to complete each one is seriously extended on higher difficulties because of the careful pace players must take.

In campaign mode, you join up with three other players and have to work together to survive. Lone wolf tactics will not work on anything above normal difficulty, which is where the real meat of the gameplay is at.

Versus mode takes place much like campaign mode, except for the fact that the "boss monsters," or the Smoker, Hunter, Boomer, and Tank mentioned earlier, are player controlled. There are 8 people playing in versus mode, and each side must work together to take the other side down. This isn't a typical death match, as the survivors still have the same goals as they would during the campaign. Once they make it to a safe room or extraction point, the round is over and the survivors tally up their points. If all survivors die before they make it to their objective, they lose the round. Either way, at the end of a round, players switch places and continue to the next section of the campaign.

Single player is campaign without the benefit of human companions. The 3 NPCs will be AI-controlled. The teammate AI in this game is defnitely good enough for any difficulty, but it's not the same game without human interaction. It's a lot more predictable, and it's not as fun fighting zombies without having someone to yell at.

There are six guns total: pump shotgun, SMG, pistol, auto-shotgun, hunting rifle, and assault rifle. You can use two pistols at a time and pistols never run out of ammo. There are two grenade type weapons: molotov cocktails and pipe bombs. The molotov will blanket a small area in fire and slowly burn any zombies that run through. Pipe bombs light up and beep, causing zombies to surround them before exploding. There is one stationary weapon, a mounted machine gun, which only appears at specific moments in each campaign. Gas canisters, propane tanks, and other flammable or exploding objects can be hefted around and placed anywhere, or simply be shot to explode or light zombies on fire.

If you're planning on buying the console version, you'll be missing out on over half the game content unless you have a subscription to XBL Gold. If you're getting it on PC, you don't have to worry so much about that.

It's running on the Source engine, so technically it may not feature the kind of geometry or texture work found in AAA Unreal-powered games. Still, L4D runs the most current version of Source, with very good lighting and no slowdown, even when there are 30 or more zombies on screen. Even on 360, online play runs on dedicated servers, so connections are usually solid.

L4D is probably the greatest online co-op game of all time. The gunplay is very simple, but strategy is very deep. It's a very pure form of FPS. There is no puzzle solving, there are very few places to get lost or turned around. It's one of the most focused shooters I've ever played. There are essentially only two things to do: help your teammates and kill zombies.

Everluck pretty much sums it up perfect. Unfortunately, with this type of game, the true weakness can be the players. So far ive had ONE good group of guys, the rest have been a bunch of rambo douchebags or mr. lets explore every single room cause god knows theres a ton of things you can collect. It end ups being me and one other good player together, and the other two doing whatever the fuck they feel like doing, then getting mad when were not right there when they are stupid enough to wake up the witch, or get jumped on by a hunter, etc, etc.

Its frustrating. I mean yeah theres making mistakes, we all do it, and thats fine, but these poeple just cant get it through their heads that we have to play together. Still a fun game though.

Logged

-Give a man a fire, and hes warm for a day. Light a man on fire, and hes warm for the rest of his life.-

This game is so friggin' awesome it's ridiculous but I was thinking the a "mall" level was inexplicably not available. On the other hand, maybe they decided not to go that route after the whole Dead Rising vs. George Romero mess that was going on in the courts recently. I hope they can add that to this game at some point though because that would be pretty sweet. Start off in the sewers and make it to the roof or whatever. I mean, COME ON!!!

This game is so friggin' awesome it's ridiculous but I was thinking the a "mall" level was inexplicably not available. On the other hand, maybe they decided not to go that route after the whole Dead Rising vs. George Romero mess that was going on in the courts recently. I hope they can add that to this game at some point though because that would be pretty sweet. Start off in the sewers and make it to the roof or whatever. I mean, COME ON!!!

Haven't really seen much problem with two-player split screen co-op. There is a weird bug where the blood spraying animation caused by the hunter when he jumps on a survivor plays even when the hunter is killed, but so far no noticeable problems.